Girlhood Movie Database

16. 2024 Reflections (AKA “The Maggie & Marin Movie Awards”)

We’re entering 2025 with new equipment and a revamped recording schedule, but we also want to take the time to appreciate the movies we covered and conversations we had in 2024—hence our creation of the prestigious Maggie & Marin Movie Awards. Which films were our favorites? Which intertextualities were the sexiest? Why does this episode open with Marin talking about Jojo Siwa? (It comes full-circle at the end, we promise.) Happy New Year!

15. The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love

Hallelujah, folks. We’ve got a movie brimming with whimsy and goofiness that offers a tender vision of girlhood, first love, and queerness: Maria Meggenti’s THE INCREDIBLY TRUE ADVENTURE OF TWO GIRLS IN LOVE (1995). Maggie takes us on some major philosophical quandaries—Why is it difficult to analyze joy? What if you don’t need to love yourself before you love someone else?—and Marin puts her English degree to good use with an exuberant read on the film’s title. Apologies for the delay in posting this episode. We recorded it at the end of October but a variety of factors (the U.S. presidential election, general exhaustion, etc.) collided shortly after and we’ve taken a break this month. We’ll be back recording in December and have some very special projects and episodes on the horizon!
 
Secondary texts referenced:
National Anthem (2023) dir. Luke Gilford 
“The Body Electric” by Hurray for the Riff Raff 
“Review: The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love” by Roger Ebert
Beautiful World, Where are You? by Sally Rooney

14. The Slumber Party Massacre

This week we’re talking about the definitive slasher of Maggie’s girlhood, Amy Holden Jones’s THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE (1982)—a movie which offers just about everything you could want in a horror classic: inventive gore, insightful commentary on female sexuality and objectification, goofy phallic symbols, queer longing, and girls eating pizza over a corpse. Happy Halloween!
 
Secondary texts referenced:
Slumber Party Massacre (2021) dir. Danishka Esterhazy

13. Scream

We’re prepping for Halloween by subjecting ourselves to the most stomach-churning sight of the 90s: Skeet Ulrich’s greasy hair tendrils. Marin’s pick this week is SCREAM (1996), the first horror movie that actually scared her. And while Skeet’s hair IS an abomination, this film has plenty of other horrors for us to dissect: teenage misogynists, extreme fandom, and weaponized self-awareness. We also praise Drew Barrymore (naturally) and discuss how her one scene really is as affecting—in both its terror and its sadness—as everyone remembers. 
 
Secondary texts referenced:
“The fandom menace: People, get a life!” by Roger Ebert 
Ghosts of You by Cathy Ulrich

12. The Virgin Suicides

It’s the movie that launched Sofia Coppola’s directing career and awakened Young Maggie to the beauty of Kirsten Dunst’s armpits: the dreamy, detailed, and devastating THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (1999). We wrestle with the male narration, Marin details falling out of love with the novel upon which the film is based (and appreciating the film more as a result), and we talk about the knottiest of conundrums: how to protect adolescent girls from the world without totally depriving them of it.  
 
Secondary texts referenced:
Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
“No” by Anne Boyer (from A Handbook of Disappointed Fate)
“Our Sisters Shall Inherit the Sky” by Alana Massey (from All the Lives I Want: Essays About My Best Friends Who Happen to Be Famous Strangers)

11. Cruel Intentions

We’re investigating a supremely entertaining work of garbage this week and, honestly, thank goodness—we needed some laughter around here. CRUEL INTENTIONS (1999) has it all: one of the most despicable romantic heroes in teen film history, ~tension~ between step siblings, a perfect Sarah Michelle Gellar performance, and a Counting Crows needle drop that offends Maggie but reverts Marin into a sentimental tween. We rant, we cackle, we reflect, we put this movie in conversation with some of the most influential art ever made (because this is our show and we do what we want). Enjoy!    
 
Secondary texts referenced:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (2018) dir. Madeleine Perry and John Olb
“Introduction to Les Liaisons Dangereuses” by Alfred Mac Adam (Barnes & Noble Classics edition) 
“Pure Heroines” by Jia Tolentino (from Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion)

10. Miller's Girl

MILLER’S GIRL (2024) was panned by critics and didn’t recoup even a fourth of its budget at the box office, so, naturally, we had to talk about it and dare to ask, “Is it really that bad?” The movie is fundamentally about a student being groomed by her teacher, so there’s a lot at stake in terms of how it addresses victimhood, villainy, and power—and our feelings about the outcome are complicated.
 
Secondary texts referenced:
Bunny by Mona Awad
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
The Room (2003) dir. Tommy Wiseau 
Jade Halley Bartlett interview with Forbes: “Miller’s Girl As a Villain Origin Story”

09. Shirkers

We wade into the world of documentary filmmaking with Sandi Tan’s SHIRKERS (2018), which reflects on Tan’s teenage experience of making a movie with her friends and losing the footage after their teacher steals it. The movie’s “layers of aboutness,” as we writerly types love to say, are plentiful—and get into as much as we can wrap our heads and hearts around: magical realism, punk spirit, youthful determination, and how to live a life that is in service to your art. 
 
Secondary texts referenced:
“Lessons of the Line: Charles Simic and Me” by Dana Levin (from the Yale Review, spring 2024 issue)
“After the World-Breaking, World-Building” by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal (from Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders)

08. Make Up

The day has arrived: Maggie vibes with a movie much more than Marin does. The movie in question? Claire Oakley’s MAKE UP (2019), a surreal and sparse story about a teen girl’s coming-to-desire on the Cornwall coast. Maggie offers a compelling analysis of characterization which invokes the spirits of Dashiell Hammett and RHW Dillard (our beloved former professor), Marin argues that the film is at least horror-adjacent, and we discuss the symbolism of the sea (original, we know), the implications of “straight-baiting,” and the staying power of memes about men who don’t furnish their apartments.
 
Secondary texts referenced:
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Syzygy, Beauty by T. Fleischmann
The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett 
Magical/Realism: Essays on Music, Memory, Fantasy, and Borders by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
Claire Oakley interview with Little White Lies
Claire Oakley interview with AnOther Magazine

07. Support the Girls

Did you ever work a soul-crushing service job that sometimes sent you to the bathroom crying? Then we have the episode for you! Andrew Bujalski’s SUPPORT THE GIRLS (2018) is a lovely and loving film which follows a restaurant manager and her all-female staff as they try to make it through the day. We talk about its authentic approach to solidarity, the dynamic ensemble of characters, our own hellish work experiences, and the significance of the film’s male writer-director. 
 
Secondary texts referenced:
Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974) dir. Martin Scorsese
“Grip” by Joy Castro (from Island of Bones)